His sinuous fingers worked the vinyl like none before him. His nerves were a straight shot from his head to his hands without stopping anywhere along the way. The turntables were nearly another pair of hands. It's hard to say if he was first to scratch or cut -- there's been arguments on all sides. I

Cool, Layered, Pioneering, Rhythmic, Urban

Anything made by hand or by machine or by lies is "fabricated." Fabrication is that dubious domain where invention can slide toward, and couple with, duplicity. Or not. Sugarhill Gang, one of the first groups to put hip hop on vinyl, knew this slippery slope just too well. With luck on their side, t

Bright, Joyful, Pioneering, Pop, Quirky

Kraftwerk's reclusiveness is notorious. They've turned down all offers to work with big names-- not David Bowie, not Elton John, nor Michael Jackson neither. They've never re-mixed the work of another artist. They hold the reins over production tightly, to the point of self-management. They haven't e

Hypnotic, Industrial, Kinetic, Machinistic, Pioneering

In "A Room of One's Own," Virginia Woolf asks her readers to imagine that Shakespeare had a sister. Woolf contends that such a woman, regardless of how gifted she might have been, would have had no chance to be Shakespeare's equal; she would have been denied the education afforded her brother and lef

Contemplative, Feminist, Lush, Medieval era, Pioneering, Religious